Human islet transplant frequently fails due to apoptosis and necrosis occurring in the cells prior to transplantation. Successful transplantation is hampered by poor survival of transplanted insulin secreting beta (β) cells contained in the islets. Oxidative stress and other stresses are a major cause of decrease in cell or tissue viability and loss or insulin-secretion function prior to transplantation. The success-rate of human islet-cell transplantation is highly dependent on the number of viable insulin-secreting cells transplanted.
Islet transplantation has been successful in treating many patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus. However, this therapeutic procedure is limited because of the chronic shortage of cadaveric pancreata. Therefore, developing methods to increase islet mass by stimulating the proliferation of islet cells in-vitro would have a significant impact for expansion of insulin producing β-cells for transplant applications. Pancreatic β-cells are relatively susceptible to the damaging effects of oxidative stress because of low levels of free-radical quenching enzymes. Thus, there is a need to increase the number of viable insulin-secreting cells as a means for improving tissue or cell transplantation or treating type 1 diabetes mellitus.